Currently, the manner in which a User establishes desire for content or interaction with other parties involves establishing some sort of physical profile (e.g. reader response card, personal relationship, customer profile form) or digital profile (e.g. web-based, browser-based or other digital inputs) with one or more entities (businesses, organizations, content providers, schools, etc.) Currently, in each profile account or membership, a User “opts in” for communications with this entity and provide contact information and content and modality preferences. In some instances, merely making an inquiry to or purchase from an entity creates an implied assumption or explicit permission on the part of the entity that a given User consents to receipt of continued communications, solicitations, electronic mail (“email”) messages, etc., from that entity; in such situations, the only control a User has over use of his or her profile is by completing a so-called “opt out” form, to decline receiving certain types of communications and/or solicitations from the entity. Such “opt out” forms are not usually globally applicable across many entities, and are difficult to update and modify once completed. For example, a
User may want to “opt out” of all communications from an online store during certain parts of the year, but may very much want at least certain types of communications during the holiday buying season, or when certain items become available or go on sale, etc. The presently available mechanisms for a User's control of these communication preferences can be inadequate to keep up with a User's changing needs, and often require the User to manually contact each entity to update preferences any time the User's needs change.
In addition, an individual may have a few, dozens, or hundreds of consumer identities, depending on his or her consumer behavior. These current consumer identities may be based on a number of different characteristics. For example, some identities are based on authentic personal identity, such as used in highly secure transactions such as those conducted with financial institutions and hospitals. Some types of websites, such as certain social networking websites require use of a User's real name, such as GOOGLE+. Some applications and websites, such as FACEBOOK, MYSPACE and TWITTER, permit use of a pseudo personal identity (Jim Richards versus James Patrick Richards) or sometimes a hidden personal identity such as “bigredteddybear54321” or “ilovetoskiatnight”. Further, these identities may be used with physical or online entities.
Examples of contact information typically collected during the enrollment or account update process include but aren't limited to name, address, phone, email and other demographic information such as language preferences, sex, income, education, religion, language preferences, sexual preferences, physical attributes, and other characteristics that describe them. Examples of interests (also referred to as interests, hobbies, activities, etc.) include but aren't limited to specific interest areas such as automobiles, apparel, music, news, real estate, business services, jewelry, travel, healthcare, etc. Current examples of modalities include calls, emails, texts/SMS and other solicitation-oriented, invitation-oriented or offer-oriented transactions.
FIG. 1. shows a high level process chart for a typical User profile transaction between a User and a Provisioner. In this scenario, a User visits a Provisioner website and enters data according to pre-determined data fields controlled by the Provisioner 100. Provisioners will typically host a webpage that relates to their terms of service, and in that webpage will describe if and how they will use the User data 110. For a User to obtain the benefits of the relationship with the Provisioner, the User is required to accept the terms of service. Events or preferences may change that require a User to update their profile. When the User updates the profile data, the data is refreshed in the Provisioner database and available to the Provisioner once again to use as they deem 130, typically within the scope of any published policy.
FIG. 2. shows a high level, multi-Provisioner flowchart wherein the User uses one “Federated ID” as login credentials for each of many Provisioner's independent websites. In this scenario, a User establishes an online Profile with one of many federated ID providers, such as Open ID, in sufficient detail to create a unique online identity 150. Once processed by the system, the User may use their federated identity as credentials to log in to any Provisioner who accepts the credentials 170. In this scenario, the User dataset is available to participating Provisioners, and the Provisioners may use the User profile data at the Provisioners discretion based on terms of service.
Additionally, most, but not all, User profiles are Internet-specific and do not currently assist the User entity in their experiences in the analog (i.e.“real”) world. Internet-specific profiles engage various types of content, including but not limited to subscriptions to digital content such as newsletters, media files, ebooks, data files, mobile web files, etc. Customer affinity cards, also known as “customer key tags” contain barcodes used to tie retail transactions to a store's database, and by enabling customers to identify themselves as “frequent shoppers” the store may allow customers to benefit from discounts as well as to identify offers that may be of interest to customers.
Nowhere in current art do Users have the ability to specify how they want to interact with the store, and Provisioners do not have any way to affect the customer experience on a customer-by-customer basis, nor to provide an aggregate customer experience based on preferences, especially those that change over time.
Users who try to manage many, dozens or hundreds of profiles can become overwhelmed by keeping track of current systems that make use of User profile and preference information. Users often have to add, modify, and/or delete the same information over and over again in different portals. If an element of a User's demographic data changes (for example, a User gets married and changes names, moves, changes phone number, changes email address, etc.), the User has to update the information in each portal separately.
Moreover, with presently available techniques for using User profile and preference information, Users can become overwhelmed with marketing messages and barraged with content and experiences via email and location-based marketing in which they are not interested and are not qualified prospects. This wastes the marketing investment of the Provisioner (i.e., the entity making use of the profile to initiate some type of contact or interaction with the User) while adding to the frustration of the User or consumer. The current state of art in Provisioner systems is also flawed, in that Provisioner systems only have access to answers to specific questions they ask of the Users, many times missing key profile information that would allow the Provisioner to expand their relationship, increase affinity and/or increase revenue from Users.
Moreover, there is currently no way for Users to express interest or feedback related to their customer experience in real-time, nor a way for Provisioners to analyze the information in real-time.